While Japan may not have as many lethal predators as, say, Australia, it still has a lot more creepy-crawlies and animal oddities than the UK, and while I'm not quite Wildlife Photographer of the Year, I have managed to capture a few for posterity.

First up is this snake I spotted while cycling along a country road. I'll be completely honest here and say that I have no idea what kind of snake it is, but despite having a camera waved around approximately a forked tongue's length from its beady eyes, I can hereby bear witness that it did not sink its fangs into my arm or inject me with poisonous venom in any way, shape or form. In fact, it didn't move a muscle the whole time I was ogling it, so perhaps it was asleep.

When I say 'camera', what I actually mean is 'mobile phone camera', and this being Japan, the camera part of my mobile phone has an impressive 8.1 mega pixels to play with, which means that despite not being able to see what's on the screen during daylight hours, you can take shots that wouldn't look out of place on the memory card of a digital SLR.

A very large moth - probably twelve or thirteen centimetres across - seen lurking above the wash basins in a public loo.

A kabuto-mushi, aka rhinocerous beetle.

Kabuto were the elaborately decorated helmets samurai used to wear in battle, and the Japanese keep the samurai tradition alive by pitting their kabuto-mushi against each other in insect sumo wrestling contests.

This little fellow was given to Mrs M as a present when one of her colleagues found it in the chemist's shop where they both work, although since it didn't seem to be enjoying life in a small cardboard box, rather than training it to be an insect sumo killing machine, we decided to let it go outside the apartment.

Female kabuto-mushi look more like ordinary beetles - albeit ordinary beetles that are approximately the size of a bar of soap - and don't have the crazy pincer-like horns / antlers their male counterparts are blessed with.

Particularly in Tokyo, the night-time call - a kind of high-pitched whirring noise like a speeded up football rattle - of the semi (cicada) can be quite deafening.

Mrs M tells me that semi live underground for several years, before emerging to sit in a tree and make a lot of noise for about a week, during which time they shed their skin (the Wikipedia entry for the cicada contains quite a neat little video of this), mate, lay some eggs and then promptly pass away. So rather than being a photo of a semi, this is a photo of its discarded shell.

Apart from mosquitos, which are practically impossible to photograph unless you have a very good camera, proper protective clothing and a full can of insect repellent close at hand, cockroaches - or in Japanese, gokiburi - are the peskiest pest in Japan.

The cockroaches I encountered in Tokyo were the biggest and baddest of the lot, so this one, which okah-san zapped with a lethal dose of cockroach killer - a spray that cuts off the roach's oxygen supply so that it dies a slow and agonising death - was only a few centimetres long.

A dragonfly, or tonbo as they're called in Japan.

Tonbo can be seen flitting back and forth above the rice fields for much of the summer, and are of course much bigger than weedy little British dragonflies.

A spider that is, I suspect, a lot less dangerous than it looks.

A grasshopper / cricket.

A very hair caterpillar (as opposed to a はらぺこあおむし), which wriggled across the pavement surprisingly quickly.

A non-hairy but still rather colourful caterpillar.

A dog in a microwave.

Well, OK, so it's not really a dog in a microwave, but since we're on the subject of animals, I thought I'd include a couple of photos of the unique institution that is the Japanese pet shop.

Whereas in a typical British pet shop there won't be any dogs or cats on display at all, here there are banks of glass-fronted cubicles and perspex cages, each containing a tired-looking puppy or kitten.

When it comes to keeping pets, the Japanese are very much of the tie-it-up-outside-and-leave-it-be school of thought, so this kind of thing isn't considered cruel at all, and is of course extremely popular with children, who even if they didn't want a puppy when they came into the pet shop, are guaranteed to want one by the time they leave.

As well as a price, the notices to the right of this cage / microwave contain information about where the puppies were born, how large they will be when they grow up, and whether or not they have been vaccinated.

Apparently, one of these chihuahua puppies is around half the price of the other - 45,000 yen / 350 GBP as opposed to 88,000 yen / 700 GBP - because it has recently been treated for a hernia.

The other notices on the cage say things like, 'When the puppy is asleep, please do not wake it up / tap on the glass. Puppies and kittens need about twenty hours' sleep a day, so please be quiet,' and, 'The world's smallest dog. Spirited, inquisitive and full of vigour.'

Here's another pet-related oddity: the large, glass-fronted box in this shop is like a kind of dog car wash, in that you put your dog inside, close the door, push the start button, and the dog is then shampooed, rinsed and blow-dried automatically.

When we saw a dog in mid-cycle, it didn't seem to be unduly terrified, and as a lot of pet owners would testify, using a dog wash is probably a lot easier than using a bath.

Last but not least, here is the one that got away.

The small, grey, out-of-focus blob you can just about see in the middle of this photograph is in fact an inoshishi (猪 / wild boar).

While inoshishi are common in Japan, it's very unusual to see one first-hand, although okah-san tells us they often visit her allotment to try and nose their way into the compost bin.

Mrs M spotted this one standing in a field as we drove past, and when we returned to take a photogaph, it crossed the road directly in front of us. What my mobile phone camera then singularly failed to capture was a very large - at least a couple of times bigger than your average Alsatian - and slightly bedraggled creature with two little trademark tusks either side of its snout.

In the latest edition of our community newspaper, there was a two-page article telling farmers how to safeguard their crops from inoshishi, which as well as weighing in at between 50 and 100kg, can run at speeds of up to 40kmh and overturn objects of up to 60kg in their quest for food.

About me 私について

I suppose I must be the archetypal J-blogger - married to a native, working as an English teacher, still struggling with the language - and the main purpose of this blog is to give you an idea of what life is like for a multi-cultural couple in small-town Ibaraki.